Designer Babies and the Psychological Cost

    I was going to give you, my dear readers, a dorky Star Trek example to begin this essay, but since I’m getting ready to do a little traveling, I’m feeling benevolent. Look at me! Instead: Remember the sci-fi thriller Gattaca (1997)? In that underrated film, a not too distant society is divided by genetic status. The protagonist, played by Ethan Hawke, is a naturally conceived “invalid”, while Jude Law plays a former swimming champion whose life was engineered for perfection. Law’s traits had been selected by a geneticist, his fate inscribed in his cells. He was “never meant to be one step down on the podium” — so when he wins silver instead of gold at the Olympics, he throws himself in front of a car. In a society that promises perfection, the psychological cost of failure is high.

    For some kids growing up today, this feeling might be more than a little familiar. Some of the first so-called “designer babies” — whose embryos were screened for flaws or who were primed for ideal traits with carefully selected sperm or egg donors — are now teenagers, and according to recent studies, many are depressed. Last December, a West Coast psychologist spoke to the magazine Wired about these privileged young patients nevertheless haunted by their own DNA; often the children of Silicon Valley elites buckling under the expectations of their “distant parents.” The anonymous source spoke about children who discovered that their egg-donor biological mother had psychiatric problems: they were told, “Your donor is nuts, so you must be too.”

    Their parents select — and shell out thousands — for preferred traits, cherry-picking donors for different qualities, perhaps “a sporty son and an artsy daughter.” There is something desperately naive about the latter: you cannot guarantee enthusiasm for Moleskine notebooks or ponchos, after all. But these preferences are not just laughter-inducing, they are sinister; they show that even among blue-sky idealists who resent the constraints of their own genetic material, the social constraints represented in their preferences — boy strong, girl soft — go completely unquestioned. How might the offspring of that particular family experience their own childhood if their bodies and tastes digress from their expensive fates, if the son develops an unauthorized love of Twinkies and can’t run once around the track without collapsing; if the daughter has an unplanned aptitude for rugby and sucks at sketching? It’s one thing to let down your parents, but quite another to let down your geneticist.

    Because many of the genetic-testing startups are based in and around Silicon Valley, designer babies have been swept up in the broader philosophy of tech-bro life optimization. Elon Musk, father of an indeterminate number of children, is said to have used genetic screening via the startup Orchid for at least one of his brood. In some ways, this is just an extension of the manifold ways Silicon Valleyites track and upgrade their bodies; these are people obsessed with “biohacking”, intermittent fasting, ice baths, LSD microdosing and Oura rings. We should not be surprised that they are equally obsessive about their offspring — but the extent to which it is possible is disturbing. For instance, I was unaware that here in the United States, it is legal to screen for qualities such as hair color, eye color and sex before an embryo is implanted in the womb; while there is ethical criticism from some quarters, there is no legal framework to prevent it. Among the controversial possibilities of ever-improving embryo screening is selecting for intelligence. The biotech company Heliospect claims to be able to bump up predicted height and IQ for the “low” price of $50,000 per 100 embryos; the approach is promised to boost your fetus’ by more than six IQ points. In undercover footage, a Heliospect employee describes IQ as one of the “naughty traits that everybody wants.” Picking a child who won’t be fat, stupid, spotty or depressed is, according to this wink-wink wording, about as controversial as using a cheat code at Penn or Harvard. But that’s the thing about being “naughty”; it’s a one-off — scanning a Dunkin’ Donut as a 20-cent bread roll at the checkout is no big deal unless everybody does it. But what if they did? What would that society look like?

    “Everyone can have all the children they want and they can have children that are basically disease-free, smart, healthy; it’s going to be great,” said Heliospect’s CEO Michael Christensen in 2023. And it’s not just good for your family, it’s good for society. Simone Collins, who with her husband Malcolm is among the best-known pronatalists today, told The New York Times: “Societies that have more intelligent people will have lower rates of crime, of rape, of violence, because intelligence correlates negatively with those societal blights.” While this is undoubtedly true, there are more than a few glaring problems with such an approach, not least that if you strictly optimized for peaceability, academic attainment and social compliance you would only ever have daughters. The eugenicists of the early 20th century — a cohort that, believe it or not, included Helen Keller — sacrificed individual liberty among undesirables for the collective good; this sort of zealotry has rightly remained controversial since — until, that is, the ideas made contact with the demagogues out on the West Coast.

    The project of scientific pronatalism itself has become a target for misanthropic internet weirdos; not long ago, a 25-year-old “pro-mortalist” named Guy Edward Bartkus was believed to have blown up an IVF clinic in Palo Alto, California, and himself with it. He resented, according to a half-assed manifesto he left behind, not having consented to his own birth. In the catastrophic event, all embryos stored at the clinic were salvaged. If pro-natalism crystallizes hope, health and humanity, then the disaffection of lurkers of incel forums, in which “pro-mortalism” is common, makes sense. These are people who feel they have lost the lottery of life, and who are doomed by their apparent defects — height, weak jawline, social ineptitude — to celibacy and misery; though mainstream society has come to despise such men, their astuteness on this point is worth mentioning. What is inceldom if not the reverse of the sunny, pro-social, optimistic ideology which drives parents to screen their embryos? Each, after all, is underpinned by a fetishistic obsession with the fatalism of birth.

    For neo-eugenics to really take hold, it will have to first contend with an unprecedented cultural shift towards “celebrating difference.” It is strange that the technological ability to perfect our babies — and its acceptability in America — has come at the exact point at which diversity, both mental and physical, has gained a mystical, if not absurd, sense of importance. Just as young people began forming their identities around characteristics such as neurodiversity and mental ill-health, the next generation of parents began trying to breed them out. On the one hand, diagnostic criteria for conditions like ADHD and autism are being stretched to the point of uselessness, wrapping up rocketing numbers of “normal” teenagers in the warm bosom of understanding and exceptionalism. At the same time, for those who can afford it, these conditions are becoming almost optional. The bio-engineered teens of today are living proof that when people have plenty of money and choice, American would-be parents are “naughtily” selecting for the same old traits that have always been desired: good health, sociable, attractiveness, intelligence, doing whatever they can to steer the nature-nurture tiller. For all the posturing and label-fetishism of the 2020s, a 1920s eugenicism lurks beneath. In an echo of that old line trotted out by racists, “I’m fine with [talentless/fat/acne-prone] kids — I just wouldn’t want one in my womb.”

    Gone are the days of sterilizing the cognitively impaired. But medical intervention in social ills, which seem like ghosts of the unenlightened, pre-Nazi 20th century, are everywhere for those with eyes to see. As we speak, GLP-1 injections are being rolled out with the promise of reviving our sickly workforce. The purification drive of eugenics never really went away; in order for these ideas to work, we have to trust those in power not to wield it recklessly. Personally, I find no comfort in that.

    The first wave of American designer babies, many of them now troubled teens, show why European countries have been more cautious about the traits for which ambitious parents are allowed to select; in Germany, France and the UK, the technology is limited to screening for serious health concerns. On a societal level, elites breeding out non-ideal traits threatens to create a genetic caste system; as the science gets better and procedures become more common, this could one day open up a new frontier in health/talent inequality. On a familial level, being a bespoke embryo taints the fundamental ingredient of a happy childhood: the belief that your parents’ love is unconditional, that of all the millions of genetic configurations that might have resulted from your conception, they are truly happy that they got you. There’s a good argument that this feeling of confidence in your own ability and worth, above any tinkering with embryonic odds, is the secret to a child’s success; nurture, after all, cannot be engineered. This truth is understood by Jude Law’s paralyzed swimmer in Gattaca; it is understood so completely that before the film is over he ends the life that had been so meticulously curated for him, a final act of rebellion against the strangest kind of unfreedom: that from your own DNA. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com